NRO-MOL_2015

Chapter XIII - AIR FORCE/NASA COORDINATION
135
The Reconstituted NASA
Experiments Board
At the initial meeting of the new committee, held on
21 January, one of the several topics discussed was
a proposed revision of the charter of NASA’s Manned
Space Flight Experiments Board (MSFEB) to include
DoD membership. ‡‡ The space agency subsequently
distributed a draft Memorandum of Agreement on the
proposed reconstituted Board and Dr. Flax solicited
the views of Generals Schriever and Evans as to the
membership. The MOL Program Director asked that he
be a member, with Evans serving as his alternate. This
suggestion was accepted. 30
On 21 March 1966 Drs. Seamans and Foster signed
the formal agreement establishing a reconstituted
MSFEB “to coordinate experiment programs which will
be conducted on DoD and NASA manned space flights.”
The Board was charged with the task of approving or
disapproving experiments, recommending experiments
for assignment to specific flight programs, setting
priorities, reviewing the status of approved experiments,
etc. The DoD membership included Mr. Fink and
General Schriever; their alternates were Mr. John E.
Kirk, Assistant Director for Space Technology, OSD,
and General Evans. NASA’s representatives were Drs.
Mueller, Newell and Mac C. Adams; their alternates,
James C. Elms, Dr. Edgard M. Cortright, and Dr. Alfred
J. Eggers, Jr. 31
Under terms of this agreement, before submitting
proposed experiments to the Secretariat for consideration
by the Board, the sponsoring agency was required to
review them for scientific and technical merit and to
establish its own list of priorities. 32
DoD Experiments for the Apollo
Workshop
As early as the spring of 1964 NASA had asked the
Defense Department whether, as in the case of Gemini,
it might also be interested in providing experiments
for the upcoming Apollo spacecraft. In response to a
request from DDR&E, the Air Force studied possible
experiments and, at the close of 1964 and in early
1965, submitted three: Radiation Measurements,
Autonomous Navigation, and a CO 2
Reduction System.
All three were approved by DDB&E and accepted by
NASA, which assigned them to Apollo-Saturn (AS)
flights 207 and 209. 33
‡‡ Attendees were Seamans, Mueller, Newell, Foster, Flax and Fink.
While NASA was planning experiments for Apollo, it
also was studying possible advanced manned missions
to exploit the hardware being created by the lunarlanding
program. In 1965, following these investigations,
it outlined a plan for a series of post-Apollo flight missions
“in earth orbit, in lunar orbit, and on the lunar surface.”
This follow-on Apollo Applications Program (AAP) it
estimated would cost $1 to $3 billion a year.
On 17 January 1966, during a meeting of the MSFEB
which General Evans attended as an observer, §§ one of
the AAP “experiments ‘’ was outlined by a NASA official.
He described a “S-IVB Spent Stage Experiment” whose
purpose was to demonstrate the feasibility of providing a
habitable, shirt-sleeve environment in orbit using already
developed hardware. An airlock would be developed:
... using qualified Gemini flight
hardware to allow docking of the
Apollo Command Service Module
(CSM) with the hydrogen tank of the
spent stage of the S-IVB booster.
Once docked, the airlock unit will
provide ingress-egress capability,
life support, electrical power, and
the necessary environmental control
required for pressurizing and
maintaining the S-IVB stage hydrogen
tank so that astronauts may work
inside in a shirt-sleeve environment
during a 14-day or greater mission. 34
The “spent stage” experiment was to be scheduled
for the SA-209 mission in the last quarter of 1967.
Listening to this presentation, it occurred to General
Evans that the early flight date might offer the Air Force
a unique opportunity “to design experiments, directly
supporting MOL development, to obtain information on
crew activities in a large volume orbital vehicle.” 35 On
21 March, at another meeting of the Board, he advised
the NASA member that the Air Force was studying the
possibility of conducting MOL-oriented experiments
aboard the orbital workshop. Dr. Mueller welcomed the
Air Force interest and said the Board would consider any
experiments proposed. 36
Following this meeting, the Vice Director, MOL, appointed
an ad hoc group to study and recommend experiments
for the Apollo Workshop. The group was chaired by Dr.
Yarymovych and included representatives of the MOL
Systems Office, Detachment 2 at Houston, and AFSC’s
Research and Technology Division (RTD) and Office of
the Deputy Commander for Space. During April 1966 the
§§ This was before the reconstitution of the Board.